Written by Jeanette Walton, Career Brand Consultant
Jeanette is spreading the word about the essentiality of career branding for all professionals. As a Career Brand Consultant, she has pioneered a career branding framework, amongst other educational resources, to amplify the use of career branding to cut through and stand out.
In our highly digitised, overstimulated, and professionally competitive world, career branding is essential in almost any work context. It’s estimated that, on an average day, we are exposed to anywhere between 4,000 and 10,000 online ads. At least 80% of consumers want to feel they trust and believe in a business or brand before investing. And when it comes to career advancement, reports indicate that around 85% of jobs are filled via professional networks, with many never publicly advertised.
Such statistics highlight the crucial importance of strong career branding, to cut through the noise, connect and engage, and ensure recall and recommendation.
The what and why of career branding
Career branding is how you convey your core professional strengths and offerings to target audiences, underpinned and enhanced by your own internal values and drivers. It immediately and convincingly highlights your professional specialisations along with your personal nuances, validating your professional worth while cultivating a positive industry or market reputation.
Some of the primary reasons and rewards of building a strong career brand include:
Establishing trust and credibility among target audiences.
Developing distinctive differentiators that help you stand out from competitors.
Enhancing internal awareness, which fuels bolder external engagement.
Expanding your reach and reputation as an industry leader.
Creating a solid foundation that influences promotional courage and creativity.
Authenticating your professional capabilities, both internally and externally.
Building consumer resonance, leading to greater loyalty and advocacy.
Some of the professional circumstances where career branding can be beneficial include:
When you have career ambitions or aspirations that aren’t adequately reflected.
If you’re actively seeking new job opportunities and haven’t gained much traction.
When your career has hit ‘turbo charge’, and your online presence hasn’t kept pace.
If you’re striving to expand your audience reach, including customers and connections.
When you feel professionally stagnant and want to build enthusiasm and confidence.
If you’re a thought leader wanting to be seen and recognised as an industry specialist.
Personal and professional benefits
Externally, career branding ensures you’re identified and evaluated, understood and engaged with, and trusted and recommended, all in line with your professional objectives. It delivers ‘career gold’ when done strategically and proactively.
For example, a service provider who clearly, consistently, and constantly communicates and substantiates their specific career brand, who talks the talk and walks the talk, is going to attract, inform, and reassure target audiences.
Internally, a well-considered career brand energises and inspires you to achieve your professional goals. With a deeper appreciation of your individual values, drivers, and differentiators, you’ll feel emboldened to express and exemplify your unique career branding.
Career branding matters framework
My self-developed Career Branding MATTERS Framework outlines seven interconnected elements (both professional and personal) that should be factored in when establishing a distinguishable and motivational career brand. This framework helps professionals deep dive into their past, present, and future, enabling them to:
Evaluate who they are professionally (and personally), how to be career branded.
Better understand what they have and what they want, their optimal career path.
Identify what they stand for, what inspires and ‘tingles’ their professional senses.
Appreciate and align with their ambitions, how they can achieve career objectives.
Champion how they can be of benefit to audiences, their primary career purpose.
Convey uniqueness and exclusivity, why target audiences should seek them out.
This framework is influenced by first-hand observations made over 12+ years as a consultant in the career development domain, working with a diverse range of professionals to optimise strategies, expectations, and aspirations. It is also based on in-depth research into the realms of professional and personal branding, what substantiates and resonates with target audiences, what energises and empowers individuals to realise their ambitions, and what encourages various parties to engage, activate, and invest.
The subsequent sections provide further detail on each of the seven interconnected elements that make up the Career Branding MATTERS Framework.
M = What are your main capabilities?
When reflecting on your career to date, including volunteering, professional development, and other complementary or career-story-enhancing activities, what shines through in terms of your main professional offerings? What knowledge and capabilities have you applied that have consistently contributed to output, outcomes, and the broader culture and operations?
For example, if you’ve worked in the IT industry and want to continue in this profession, what are your primary technical strengths and offerings? Which of these are most relevant to your career plans, in line with contemporary technologies and terminologies?
In addition to these highly relevant hard skills, what can be showcased from a soft skills perspective to convey a well-rounded career brand and story? These could include teamwork and mentoring, interpersonal communication, an adaptable mindset, and time management strengths.
It is also personally beneficial to evaluate your proven level of professional capability and expertise and consider whether these could position you as an industry specialist or as someone ready to step into a more senior role.
This skills-mining exercise may tap into and uncover professional assets and abilities you hadn’t fully realised or appreciated. For example, if you are regularly delegated to induct and support new team members, you likely have proven leadership capabilities. If you have been instigating new best-practice approaches, you no doubt have research strengths along with an internal drive to reinvigorate the status quo.
A = What are your ambitions and desires
After identifying and listing your main capabilities that represent your career past and align with your career future, it will be easier to consider your professional and personal objectives. It’s been estimated that the average person will spend 90,000 hours, or around one-third of their life, at work. This indicates a personal and professional crossover that should be factored in when determining an optimal career pathway.
Why not aim for a job or profession that enables you to feel more stimulated and fulfilled, one that you’ll look back on without regret or remorse? Clear, consistent, and constant career branding will kickstart and fuel such professional ambitions, including through confident promotions and interactions.
Take the time to comprehensively audit your career to date and conduct industry and market research to determine the professional aspects you have particularly enjoyed or excelled at. Also, consider whether any personal or professional motivations drive you, such as:
An innate desire to make the world a better place.
An inner knowing that you have expansive knowledge and first-hand experience to help others on their professional journey.
For example, if you’re well-established in your profession, you could brand yourself as a field specialist and articulate this through various communication channels.
Additionally, pinpoint industry-relevant stakeholders to target within your career branding strategy to assist in achieving your professional ambitions and desires. Consider ways to highlight the mutual benefits of connecting with you and promote this in your career branding content and messaging. Examples include referral partnerships or co-branding alliances.
T = What are your tingles and ethics
Underpinning your career ambitions and desires are your own specific values and passions. For example, are there any personal "feel goods" you live by, both professionally and personally, to ensure an inner sense of calm and contentment, such as treating everyone with respect? Do you have any "non-negotiables" or personal pledges that influence your professional decisions, such as only working for businesses that promote gender equality or are environmentally conscientious?
In addition to using these tingles and ethics to shape your career plans and corresponding branding, they will provide you with a deeper understanding of your responses and behaviours.
T = What are your top-of-mind talents
As discussed earlier, it’s essential to differentiate yourself in your career branding to be found and recognised as an industry leader. Inspired by your tingles and ethics, which serve to make you feel professionally gratified and dignified, your unique professional assets and offerings should be incorporated into your career branding to distinguish and authenticate you against competitors.
For example, if you are an accountant, are there any value-adds or enhancers you can use to stand out, such as a former career in a respected field or an MBA qualification? Also, consider any softer or alternative attributes that showcase your uniqueness, such as presenting at events, speaking multiple languages, engaging in voluntary work, or achieving athletic accolades.
E = In what way can you embrace the context
When validating your career brand, including your top-of-mind talents, it is beneficial to demonstrate a deep understanding of the market or industry. Most target audiences want to feel assured that you genuinely understand their needs and pain points. This could come from direct exposure through former roles or industry-relevant clients you have supported.
For example, if you are aiming to move to another country for a new job opportunity, highlight any prior exposure you have had to that market or similar ones within your career. Also, consider ways to articulate what specifically appeals to you about that market or industry and how your professional assets and offerings can provide value.
To fully embrace the professional context, also highlight any unique or transferable capabilities that can help expedite and enhance outcomes for your target audiences.
R = In what way are you relatable and realistic
Complementary to embracing the professional context, evaluate which of your experiences to date are most relevant, further validating your professional relevance. For example, what parts of your employment history are most applicable to your future career ambitions? If you have mostly worked outside of your target market, are there any instances where you gained exposure? Are there any experiences that could be positioned as advantageous to the market?
Also, consider whether any of your training and education to date add substance to your career branding and whether any job titles could be adjusted or explained to enhance relatability.
S = What conveys you’re still learning and adapting
Many of your audiences will appreciate a career-branded story that conveys evolution and aspiration, such as “I’ve been where you are now.” Consider whether your work and study history can be used to demonstrate professional growth and progression, particularly in ways that could be replicated by others. Also, factor in any life-specific influences that could enrich your career brand and story, such as a generation-to-generation commitment to community service.
Quick, agile thinking is also viewed favorably in today’s fast-paced world. Highlight instances where your responsiveness and critical thinking helped overcome a workplace gap or a project delay.
Comprehensive, well-considered career branding works
Speaking from my personal experience as a consultant and from what I have observed among professional clients, defining and championing a strong, insightful, and empowering career brand will ignite both planned and unplanned opportunities. The use of the Career Branding MATTERS Framework will ensure you delve deeply and thoughtfully into your unique traits, influences, and competencies to inspire and align future goals and choices.
Read more from Jeanette Walton
Jeanette Walton, Career Brand Consultant
Jeanette is a Career Brand Consultant that helps professionals worldwide to enhance their career prospects. To address a gap in the market, she designed a career branding framework that helps professionals design and apply their own unique career brand. She also avidly writes articles, newsletters and eBooks, features on podcasts, partners with industry alliances, and delivers educational presentations on the benefits of career branding. In her spare time, Jeanette fosters dogs, visits an aged care resident, and co-facilitates a LinkedIn Local networking group.
